Well, that’s what I promised my novel critique group, anyway… 😉 I’m not sure if I lost my mind DURING the writing of this book or if it’ll be gone AFTER the (first) finished version, but either way, I might have been nuts to promise it by that date. But I am determined! I’ll make it happen! Yay! Go me! (Waves the Happy Anise Writing Flag.)

Unless you were raised by the Amish on an island near Antarctica—and maybe even if you were—you almost certainly had no trouble recognizing that logo. (Yes, even if you’re one of those unbearably cool Portland hipsters. 😉

Why is that?

If you guessed that the Coca-Cola corporation spend lots and lots of money buying brand recognition, you’re right—but you’re only partly right. The answer is a lot more complex than it seems. And it holds the key for indie book marketing that just might really work.

A QUICK post to let everybody (hi, sis!) know that we will return to our regularly scheduled blog after I get back from… THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.
If there isn’t a sign saying that, there should be! 😉

Death Valley is the most spiritual place on earth, and we are headed there! No cell phone reception! No TV’s! No constantly checking Facebook! Just land, and space, and desert, and craters, and Scotty’s Castle, and a lot of German tourists. (There’s something about this time of year…)

And DV is a very inspiring place to create art. 😉 So that’s all I’ll say!

Where to start when it comes to problems with the photograph of the baby? There are several, and all of them are important. But they’ll be covered in the design section… except for one. And in a way, it’s the most crucial of all.

So we’re talking about what makes a bad book cover bad to the bone. Just to recap from the last post, this is an extremely bad cover for a book:

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Maybe it would be better to ask what’s RIGHT with this picture, but the story begins here.

First of all, it is not exactly 6×9, which is a very popular size. But we’re not going to count that because it was quickly put together for an example. So every day, we’ll cover a different category of.. well, of this cover. 🙂

TODAY– TEXTUAL TERRORS

This cover has a good sampling of some of the most common offenders. To wit…

1.) Spelling mistakes in the title. If you ever actually see “thirlling, “teh,” and “nucular” on a cover, the appropriate response is OMG WTF I DON’T EVEN. The point is, that’s pretty bad. Spellcheck doesn’t catch everything, but it’s a good start.

2.) The existence of the Comic Sans font. Nobody should ever use Comic Sans ever again FOR ANY PURPOSE unless they’re trying to be funny. This is not that time.

3.) Different fonts are used. It’s tricky to mix fonts, although we obviously do see it done. But we have to choose compatible fonts. Comic Sans, Jokerman, and Mesquite Std are bizarre enough in themselves. But looking at them all crammed together on a page is kind of like being bounced down the stairs by a bunch of people wearing clashing plaids and playing big cymbals. Not good.

4.) Design and spacing problems. We’ll get more into those later.

5.) A hideous pink (#e20b6b) is used for the type. Not a good thing at all. We’ll also be talking more about color later on.

How can that be true, you ask? You think that Ansel Adams sounds like a stripper name, Da Vinci… isn’t that the name of that pasta? (Note to self: Make lasagna tonight), and Roy Lichtenstein is that one country where they make Johnsonville brats (Note to self: Those would be good in the lasagna.)

Let’s face it– most ways to market your indie-published book don’t really work. No, crying won’t help. I tried it. (True, it wasn’t over this issue, but the point is that I’ve tried it.) BUT… I have special super-secret news, JUST for you. There’s a very specific type of technique that fills these criteria:

a.)Few indie authors are using it
b.) Of those authors who do use it, most aren’t really doing it very well at all
c.) People will flock to it because it’s fun and interesting in and of itself.

and

d.) It requires a very, very short time commitment on the viewer’s part.

I know it’s been horribly hideously long since my last post, but I’m in three writers’ groups, and in the novel writing group, Sex and the Single Devil is due on March 25!!! But miracles still exist in our time, and it WILL be done in its entirety. It’ll be more like 60,000 words, and the reason is that it’s now the first book in a trilogy. 🙂 Death Train is actually the second one, and I’m still playing around with ideas for the title of the third. So there WILL be more posts, and most of them will be about writing and related subjects. Case in point: The next post. Y’all seriously want to read that one.